41 year old Danish Annette Fredskov could have had a limiting belief about her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Instead she decided to take control of her condition stating: “it’s not the way I wanted things to be, but I can decide for myself what I am going to do from now.” Running became her outlet during her battle with multiple sclerosis and sparked her curiosity about human limitations. When she asked her husband about her idea to complete 26 miles every day for a whole year he responded, “if anybody can do it, it is you.” Her decision to run empowered her to refuse to let multiple sclerosis affect her life as she went through 20 pairs of running shoes, sore muscles, and extreme exhaustion, averaging about 5 hours per marathon. On her last day, she decided to hit the roads for over 10 hours and complete two marathons in celebration of her epic journey. She hopes to encourage other MS sufferers to continue living their lives to the fullest, saying “It is my hope that I am able to inspire others to do what they dream about.”

We all have challenges in our lives!

Jobs we hate but don’t have the courage to change because of the what if’s.

Adventures we would like to go on but don’t because of this excuse or that excuse or just the crippling fear that sets in when you are about to embark on something crazy!

Imagine back when you did something crazy! It doesn’t have to be a world record. It doesn’t have to be running a marathon every day for a year.

Just imagine when you were about to do something that was out of the ordinary OR maybe just out of YOUR ordinary! What did that feel like?

Right before you did that crazy thing, could you hear those little voices saying, “don’t do it, stay in your jam jams, stay by the fire where it’s nice and cozy, and comfy.”

Great lives are built on stories!

Stories of bold, massive, badassical action.

The amazing thing to me is that today we live in a world where taking action of all different kinds is so accessible! We have the ability to do just about anything we want.

A famous website, couchsurfing.com, has made it so you can travel the world and stay at someone’s house for FREE!

We have MeetUp.com that basically has every single kind of adventure group right at your finger tips to join up and become part of some other crazy peeps, doing some crazy things.

Today there truly is no excuse for living a life of mediocrity.

There are angel investors, kick starter, go fund me, airBNB, Uber, you name it. It’s crazy cool that we have these opportunities to go explore, create, and conquer.

So why don’t we?

That’s the question. Why don’t we?

We allow ourselves to accept excuses. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories.

We invent stories in our minds on why we can’t do this or we can’t do that.

Our brains will do everything possible to keep us safe and comfortable! It’s by design and for protection.

So we need to rewire that. Before anything that is uncomfortable, just start counting down from 5 and when you get to 1, take some kind of movement towards whatever it is you are fearing.

An example that comes to mind is that you are in bed, it’s the morning, and you don’t want to get up to workout. Classic right!?

A teeny small step is using the 5 second rule just to get up and get to your drawer to put some clothes on. That’s it. Don’t worry about getting to the gym. Just worry about the first small step. That’s the hardest one. Once inertia is broken, the rest becomes easy and easier.

It’s the power of momentum. Once it starts it slowly builds and build and builds, becoming more and more unstoppable. But it all starts with taking one step. Remember, count backwards from 5 and when you hit 1, make some kind of movement in the direction you want to go. That’s enough to re wire the protection portion of your mind.

You are limitless! You can do these things! Imagine the world where we all did these things. It would be even more amazing than it already is.

Remember, motivation is crap.You need purpose and then the drive will get you to where you want to go.

And our brains are designed to keep us safe so use the 5 second rule as a hack to rewire that design to get you to where you want to go.